Consumers and businesses receive media content from a variety of sources. Using a basic television, viewers can watch traditional broadcast media received via an antenna. Amongst many limitations, there are very few ways for viewers to personalize the content using these traditional broadcasts and television sets.
Cable and satellite television services solve some of the problems associated with broadcast television. Cable television providers receive a wide selection of content from a variety of programming sources and transmit the content directly to subscribers'homes. In the home, a “set-top box” may receive a video signal and display the associated content on a television. In some cases, the set-top box permits the selective reception of “pay-per-view” content. The typical cable set-top box, however, also offers subscribers limited personalization of content because it relies on one-way broadcast transmissions over coaxial (including possibly optical fiber) cables to transport content.
Digital video recorders enable greater personalization of television content. Using a menu or program guide displayed on a television by the digital video recorder, viewers may select broadcast programs to be recorded, input and store viewing preferences and/or define parental controls. However, digital video recorders rely on existing broadcast video signals for delivery of content, and usually use low bandwidth phone lines to communicate with program guide providers, which are used simply to select particular broadcast “channels” from which the digital video recorder will record. Thus digital video recorders still allow only limited personalization.
The growth of the Internet offers individuals access to a wide variety of media content. For instance, Internet music services allow users to create personal music libraries. In particular, users may locate music content stored on the computing facilities of the service and, on-demand, download the content to their local computing device. Other facilities, such as “peer-to-peer” file sharing services, allow users to locate music content stored at remote “peer” computing systems over the network and download such music content to their local computing devices. This can be accomplished using a peer-to-peer sharing application executing on a user's computing terminal, which transmits a list of available files to a central server that maintains a central library of music files available in the network of terminals. By accessing the central server, a second user may search the central library and select a music file to download. In response, the central server provides the second user with information required to establish a connection with the first network terminal. Based on this information, the second terminal establishes a peer-to-peer connection with the first terminal which, in turn, transmits the music file to the second terminal. By this method, a user's ability to personalize media content is enhanced.
With regard to visual media content, interactive video communication services are known to allow users to communicate using real-time video and audio. However, these services are limited because they typically require that each user accept an invitation to establish contact and participate in the communication. Furthermore, the quality of such communications have heretofore been restricted due to the bandwidth and transport constraints of communications networks.